I seem to have a knack for blowing these up....

[Nitrobattery]

As a lot of you know I swear by Tung-Sol EL34b's in my Roadster, but they keep blowing on me. I've gone through 3 sets in the last year and a half. I know Tung-Sol makes pretty quality stuff, so are they just not meshing with the fixed bias of the amp? Does anyone have any other EL34 suggestions? I like the Tung-Sols becaus they have all of the low end and tightness of 6L6's, but it's getting fairly expensive using them.

 

[Monsta-Tone]

I really like the JJ E34L Blue tubes! They seem to have tons of thump and about twice the headroom as the JJ EL34's.


That sucks about the TS's! I have been through a few of their 12AX7's. Not nearly as expensive as EL's, but still a pisser!

 

[MesaENGR412]

Hmm that's odd man, I've had mine in since Christmas 9again, thanks for the recommendation), have played about 50 shows, practiced on them for hours, re-amped with them while recording (twice) and traveled clear to Florida and back to NC, and haven't had any probs out of them...knock on wood. :shock: I also have a tung sol 12ax7 in my v1 position and it's holding up fine as well. Wonder what's causing yours to give out... your cab and cables are working properly? I don't know if a speaker or speaker cable short would cause power tube wear. Also, are your filter caps clean? Just ideas, could just be bad tubes though. Weird...


-AJH

 

[jakehop]

Tungsol WAS awesome quality. Now they are russian tubes, and no better than Sovtek, EHX, etc. when it comes to reliability.

Kind regards Jake

 

[R_ADKINS80]

I will second the EL34L from JJ. They out thump all of my 6L6's for low end (Stock Mesa, Shuguang, TAD and SED)

 

[c.t.d-nicke]

Nitro

Could it be because you run the amp in diode mod that makes it eat tubes?

I heard something about el34s and rec-tubes!?

nicke

 

[halfnote]

Nitro

Could it be because you run the amp in diode mod that makes it eat tubes?

I heard something about el34s and rec-tubes!?

nicke

That's a good question. The manuals say that if you run ELs you should use tube rectification, but does that mean using diode is harmfull to the tubes or is it just a tone thing?

 

[Monsta-Tone]

The voltages may be a bit too high.

 

[rabies]

I've used JJ E34L's with my marshalls and mesas in the past (and my current rivera) and had very few reliability problems (other than the one time I had a 2.67ohm load on my Mark IV!)

Those tubes are without a doubt the best I've used so far for hard blues rock or even metal. They're not too expensive from eurotubes.

that whole thing about "use recto tracking with EL34s" is pretty weak dude. get a marshall or stiletto and open some **** up!

the thing with mesa is that most of their popular amps (e.g. Mark series, Rectifier, Lonestar) are designed/intended to be used with 6L6 tubes (even though they may handle EL34s as well).

And from what I've heard, 6L6 are more reliable generally speaking than EL34s...

 

[R_ADKINS80]

Nitro

Could it be because you run the amp in diode mod that makes it eat tubes?

I heard something about el34s and rec-tubes!?

nicke

If that were the case then what about some of the other boogies that can use EL34's that don't have rectifier tubes? or other EL34 amps that use diodes?

 

[halfnote]

I've used JJ E34L's with my marshalls and mesas in the past (and my current rivera) and had very few reliability problems (other than the one time I had a 2.67ohm load on my Mark IV!)

Those tubes are without a doubt the best I've used so far for hard blues rock or even metal. They're not too expensive from eurotubes.

that whole thing about "use recto tracking with EL34s" is pretty weak dude. get a marshall or stiletto and open some sh!t up!

the thing with mesa is that most of their popular amps (e.g. Mark series, Rectifier, Lonestar) are designed/intended to be used with 6L6 tubes (even though they may handle EL34s as well).

And from what I've heard, 6L6 are more reliable generally speaking than EL34s...

I run JJ ELs in my TOV and have had no issues at all, rec and diode (though usually rec). I was just wondering if anyone actually KNOWS if it decreases tube life to use diodes? You don't get very good tube life out of EL84s run in class A on full throttle all the time, everyone knows that but people still use them.

 

[rabies]

boogies are typically cold (or very cold) biased to prevent damage to the output tranny at very high output volumes (or possibly other reasons). They have the cascading gain preamp distortion that non-master volume Marshalls didn't have back in the 60's and 70's (i.e. boogie sound comes from preamp tubes whereas old Marshall sound comes from power tubes). Those Marshalls were designed to be cranked to get the power tube distortion into the sound mix, and you could get away with that b/c they didn't have nearly as much gain as these newer amps do. boogies are not designed to be cranked like that. bottom line: the louder you crank the output volume, the shorter your power tubes will last.

I wouldn't worry about that "eating the tubes" b.s....

Tubes are hit and miss man. I went thru at least 3 bad/shorted power tubes in my brand new (possibly defective) Stiletto Deuce II before returning it to hollywood store (petaluma claimed "bad tubes"; I was like "yeah right, what's that robotube b.s.?"). if they're not NOS mullards or telefunkens, etc., tubes really are pretty cheap if you think about it...

I'd like to know what tubes David Gilmour and Jeff Beck use, for example. sick tone man...

 

[mikey383]

I've used JJ E34L's with my marshalls and mesas in the past (and my current rivera) and had very few reliability problems (other than the one time I had a 2.67ohm load on my Mark IV!)

Those tubes are without a doubt the best I've used so far for hard blues rock or even metal. They're not too expensive from eurotubes.

I'll second this. I've been running a pair of JJ E34Ls at over 90% dissipation (70% is supposed to be max, BTW) for nearly 3 years with no problems at all. Those bastards are tough.

The reason behind using tube rectification is because of the high plate voltage you get when using diodes. I get around 486 volts on my 2 channel Dual. There are a lot of EL34s that won't handle this voltage. Using tube recto drops the voltage down.